It seems like such a simple equation for the NBA Players Association. A + B = C. Bad leader plus disgruntled followers equals bad labor deal with the owners after the 2011 lockout.

“A” is executive director Billy Hunter, under investigation by his own union for business and financial improprieties since last year, and now put on leave in preparation to be officially ousted.

“B” is the membership, including president Derek Fisher, who led the movement to probe Hunter last year and leads the quest against him now (but who was accused of improprieties of his own during the lockout).

That should add up to “C," the league taking the misled, mismanaged players to the woodshed and taking money out of their pockets now and for years to come.

That’s how the math should work. But it doesn’t. Unless somebody, anybody, can come up with way the players would not have been taken to said woodshed. Could it have been prevented last year? Could it have been prevented in the other lockout during Hunter’s tenure, the 1998-99 season?

Was Hunter to blame for the result of either one? Was he even responsible for either one even happening?

Of course not. They were both planned, orchestrated and utterly controlled by the commissioner and owners, and it’s obvious, now and back then, that they had no intention of stopping until they got what they wanted. Hunter wasn’t going to stop them. Fisher or his predecessors weren’t going to.

Donald Fehr couldn’t have, either. That was proven in a painfully similar labor ploy by the NHL owners just this fall and winter, a result that looked nothing like what he accomplished on behalf of baseball players all those years.

Maybe not even Marvin Miller could have. Anybody short of Jimmy Hoffa would have struggled to do better for the NBA players.

Too bad for the players. Compared to what the owners set out to do to them, what Hunter, or Fisher, or both, did was a jaywalking ticket.

The mistrust sown among the players by both at one time or another—for now, it appears, more by Hunter than by Fisher—is nothing pretty and is terribly damaging and undeserved. It rubs salt in the wound. But no question, the wound was inflicted by the league.

And it wasn’t just inflicted on the players, with even more givebacks, limits on contract maximums, luxury taxes and other salary suppressions. The canceled games, the compressed season, the risks to health and the implication that the season should bear an asterisk (more whispered than spoken, but that’s bad enough), all hurt the sport itself.

As usual, the players are saving the NBA. If you’re excited about the rest of this return to a full season of play, including All-Star Weekend, the trade deadline and eventually the playoffs … it’s not because of anything the league office or the 30 individual owners have done. It’s certainly not because of anything they did in corrupting the previous season in the name of assuring more profits at the expense of the players.

Remember, three of the four major sports leagues instituted lockouts in the last two years. The leaders of the opposition were clearly not all dumb or crooked. Fehr’s record in baseball speaks for itself. DeMaurice Smith took the NFL union into a new era and shifted the conversation in the league in a different, needed direction. Hunter’s credentials were impeccable, and was put in the most challenging position by having to endure lockouts twice in a relatively short time.

The problem in all three cases was a level of stubbornness, short-sightedness and appetite for power from the owners and commissioners, who were making cases for their actions without ever seeming to offer proof to back them up. The constant threat to cancel entire seasons drove them.

The leagues had the ultimate leverage, and they constantly shook it at the players and, by extension, the public.

Internal bickering among the NBA players, Fisher, Hunter and the agents didn’t help. It’s a huge leap, though, to assume that the absence of any of that would have made things that much better. The NFL players were a tight unit. The NHL players did as Fehr’s previous members have always been known to do: they steered him, rather than him steering them.

The leagues didn’t break any of the unions—even they’re smart enough not to do that. But they bent them as far as possible. They got their pound of flesh, and more.

The process of the NBA players shoving Hunter out has begun. The evidence against him is damning. But as usually is the case, they’d better have an idea about who can do a better job for them the next time the league goes after them.

Against the will of this generation of owners, determined to take everything and give nothing, can any union leader, clean hands or not, expect to win?